Steven Havill - Privileged to Kill

At least we’d won the football contest. I gazed at what was left of Vanessa Davila and wondered how she’d managed to sit through the game, because it wasn’t the thrill of victory that had reduced her to jelly.

Her mother began another set of rapid-fire exhortations with the word basta sprinkled through it and I held up a hand.

“Mrs. Davila, I don’t think we’re getting anywhere,” I said. I didn’t take my eyes off her daughter. The mother subsided, and I leaned back in my chair, rapping my ring lightly on the edge of the table. It had been a long time since I’d been a practicing parent, and none of my four youngsters had strayed very far from the straight and narrow. Still, barring a family tragedy, I could think of only one reason for a fourteen-year-old to be so consumed by grief.

“Vanessa,” I said, “how well did you know Ryan House?”

Vanessa answered that question, but not with words. The name caught her off guard, and she sucked in a quick breath at the same time that her eyes closed. The flow of tears increased to a gusher, and she buried her head in her crossed arms, her thick black hair cascading around her face.

I nodded. “Well, well,” I said quietly.

“Sir?” Estelle asked.

I glanced at the detective and saw that she was frowning at me. If I was one step ahead of her, it was the first time in days. The late hours were really catching up with her.

“She wouldn’t go to a football game feeling like this,” I said. “She won’t tell us who she rode with, but she either saw, or heard about, the wreck.” I gestured toward Vanessa, whose head was still down on the table. “And she heard that Ryan House had been killed.” And when I mentioned the name, Vanessa flinched. It wasn’t much, but Estelle saw the slight hitch of the left shoulder and the snuffle from down under.

The girl’s emotions had opened a door for us, but that was the extent of her cooperation. She obviously had learned early on, and learned well, that if adults gave her a hard time, the simplest solution was just to refuse to talk to them.

We pursued her apparent acquaintance with Ryan House for several minutes without progress. Finally there appeared to be nothing else to say. I turned to the girl’s mother.

“Ma’am, if we let your daughter return home with you, are you going to be able to keep her there?”

Mrs. Davila started to say “What?” but thought better of it. She couldn’t meet my gaze and looked at Estelle instead.

“We’re going to need to talk with her again,” I said. Mrs. Davila’s chin started to quiver and tears came to her eyes. “We need to know that she’s available.”

The woman’s response surprised me. Instead of apprehension, I saw a glimmer of relief in her tear-filled eyes. “She never does what I ask,” she said. “I can’t make her mind me.” She looked at her daughter. “But she’s a good girl, mister.”

That sounded more like something said in self-defense than from any basis in truth, but I nodded sympathetically. I had my glasses on, and I tipped my head so I could scrutinize the older woman’s face through my bifocals. “Those facial bruises, Mrs. Davila. How did you get those?”

“Oh,” she replied, and her hand crept up to her face. “I fell down,” she added, and then stopped. She wasn’t a good liar. Her daughter had lifted her face from her hands and was busy wiping her eyes. Every now and again, she shot her mother a glance, just a quick look to keep tabs on the situation.

“Maybe,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said, her voice almost a whisper, “maybe it’s all just too much.” She reached out and touched the back of my hand lightly, a soothing gesture that couldn’t have been lost on anyone. “Before the Davilas go home, maybe I can talk with Vanessa for just a few minutes alone?”

I pulled at my earlobe and grimaced. “Hell, why not.” I stood up and gestured toward Mrs. Davila. “Let’s give the detective a few minutes alone with Vanessa, ma’am. It won’t hurt.” I glanced at the girl in time to catch her gaze. “Of course, it probably won’t do any good, either, but it’s one last chance for her.”

With great shuffling of papers, the sort of thing lawyers do before a trial begins, we cleared the room, leaving the five-foot-six-inch, 110-pound Estelle Reyes-Guzman with five-foot-seven, 210-pound Vanessa Davila.

When my back was turned, I couldn’t help grinning, because I knew the two were no even match.

I was as surprised as Estelle Reyes-Guzman was baffled. “The girl just won’t say a word,” she said. Estelle had spent another twenty minutes with Vanessa, and then another session with mother and daughter before giving up in frustration. Matron Aggie Bishop stayed with the pair for a few minutes until Estelle, Holman, and I could figure out a game plan.

“She knows she doesn’t have to talk,” the sheriff said in one of his rare moments of clear thinking. “There’s nothing we can do to her, and she knows it.”

Estelle watched as I poured the last cup of what passed for coffee out of the pot. “Sir, did anyone actually see her at the game?”

“I don’t know.” I spooned in creamer and watched it swirl on top of the oil slick. “Her mother said she went. No…I take that back. She said she thought that Vanessa had gone with the crowd. That’s the only word we have.”

“Oh,” Martin Holman said, and it was close to a groan. “Now we’re saying she may not even have gone to the football game? That she was just roaming around town? What do we have to do, interview two hundred kids now to find out something as simple as that?”

“Maybe so, Martin,” I said, and tossed the plastic spoon in the trash. “That she went to the game is an assumption on our part, and not a particularly bright assumption, either, as it turns out.”

Holman frowned. “Why is it so important, anyway? Do we suspect this girl of anything? Do you think she had a hand in what happened to Maria Ibarra?”

“It’s possible.” I grinned at Holman. “If we knew what actually happened to Maria, we’d be farther ahead.” I sipped the coffee, and then tossed the remainder in the trash can. “It would be more fun that way…actually making progress before the snow flies.”

“It doesn’t look like she’s ever going to tell us,” Holman said. “Vanessa Davila, I mean.”

“Unless it begins to suit her purpose,” Estelle Reyes-Guzman said.

Holman blinked at her, then snapped his mouth shut when he realized how stupid he looked. “I don’t follow,” he said.

“Well, Martin,” I said, and sighed long and loud. “Think of things from Vanessa’s position. If she’s just mourning the death of a good friend-Maria Ibarra-then talking to us isn’t going to do Vanessa any good. There’s nothing we can do to make her feel better.”

“And if she knew Ryan House, then she’s mourning him, too. And there’s nothing we can say or do to help,” Estelle added.

“But I’ve never seen a youngster just sit and ignore the world like that,” Holman said. “God, if either of my daughters were caught up in trouble, they’d babble out such a string of stuff that it’d take a week to sort things out. But this gal…she just sits there and ignores us. It’s almost like she’s got something she’s guarding from us. Something important that she doesn’t want us to know.”

Estelle nodded, and I saw the ghost of a smile touch her face. “Exactly, sir.”

“Do you want someone to watch her for a while?” I asked. “Find out where she goes and who she sees?”

Before Estelle had a chance to answer, Holman yawned and shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. “You mean like a tail? Surveillance?” I nodded. “That’s expensive,” he said. “And for a fourteen-year-old kid? It seems like a waste of time.”